This thing has had 3 years in the oven and is still half baked. Some senators were asking "how much more housing would a place like LA need to add, beyond what they’ve already done, to have enough to avoid SB 50?" Scott Weiner kept dodging the question and fell back on that old crutch "we need 3.5 million new houses in total" and have to take the wins wherever we can, whatever that means. Only an arrogant prick like Weiner would ask for your vote without ironing out those incredibly important details or simply giving places like LA and Pasadena a pass.
Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo voted against the bill and issued this statement, to my point:
"We need clearer parameters on the housing creation required for local governments and our communities, and on the flexibility allowed to local governments to locate housing where it works best for our communities. We also need a realistic view of the parking needs created by new housing. To require none ignores reality and worsens existing parking shortfalls in the very transit corridors where the legislation seeks to foster new housing."
I don’t live in city of LA… my town (and a few of our neighbors) have built very little (besides parking structures) around rail stops. And people wonder why transit ridership is in a rut.
Yes we understand it that’s why most NIMBYs I know have been supporting more luxury housing on the corridors, to keep up with the influx of tech jobs so that our prices and rents don’t become like San Francisco’s. While that would help stabilize housing costs at the mid to high end NIMBYs have no illusions that those market-rate units would be affordable to the lower income folks who have been ignored in the discussion.
You guys never give LA credit for being #5 in the nation for new housing construction. That’s bad faith.
What? I’d revise the statement that Boston is "the most congested American city." Take a look at the latest TomTom rating of congested cities worldwide: TomTom Traffic Index
Boston is #184; LA is #31.
What does Boston have that LA doesn’t? An underground tunnel network. Give Elon Musk some props for pursuing his tunnel technology. Those tunnels can also be combined with the congestion pricing idea, i.e, charge people to use the tunnels to avoid congestion. Seattle’s Alaskan Way viaduct is a recent example.
Even the poster child for Vision Zero, Oslo, has tunnels, with some direct entrances to parking garages. Take a look at Rv162 to see what’s possible when the full embrace of multi-modal transportation doesn’t exclude automobiles..
The more housing they build the more people will move here. What makes anyone think that if you build "affordable " housing in LA that people with more money from other places would not just come to LA and buy it ? LA is a destination city, the only thing that keeps LA from becoming even more packed is that most people can’t afford a house to live in. Face it, most of the US has really shitty weather for a portion of the year and once you get out of a few city metro areas the country is pretty boring. The only thing that will create "affordable" housing opportunities in LA is a really bad economy with high unemployment, and in that case, even though the price tag is lower it will not matter because people don’t have jobs.